A Weblog by One Humble Bookman on Topics of Interest to Discerning Readers, Including (Though Not Limited To) Science Fiction, Books, Random Thoughts, Fanciful Family Anecdotes, Publishing, Science Fiction, The Mating Habits of Extinct Waterfowl, The Secret Arts of Marketing, Other Books, Various Attempts at Humor, The Wonders of New Jersey, the Tedious Minutiae of a Boring Life, Science Fiction, No Accounting (For Taste), And Other Weighty Matters.

Who Is This Hornswoggler?

Andrew Wheeler is a Vassar alum, class of 1990. He spent 16 years as a bookclub editor (mostly for the Science Fiction Book Club), and then moved into marketing. He marketed books and related products to accountants for Wiley for eight years, and now works for Thomson Reuters as Senior Marketer for Corporate Counsel. He was a judge for the 2005 World Fantasy Awards and the 2008 Eisner Awards. He also reviewed a book a day for a year twice. He lives with The Wife and two mostly tame sons (Thing One, born 1998; and Thing Two, born 2000) at an unspecified location in suburban New Jersey. He has been known to drive a minivan, and nearly all of his writings are best read in a tone of bemused sarcasm. Antick Musings’s manifesto is here. All opinions expressed here are entirely and purely those of Andrew Wheeler, and no one else.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Last weekend, I put through two orders for books simultaneously -- one from that unnamed monolithic giant of e-commerce that you'd expect (use my links to buy more stuff for yourselves, so I can get three cents in credit!), and one from what I still think as my "local" comics store (Midtown Comics, near Times Square in Manhattan), though I haven't worked in Manhattan in nearly five years and not in that vicinity since 2005. The main reason for the order was to refill the stacks of read-a-novel, earn-a-manga, since Thing Two had been burning through fantasy novels over the winter (he slowed down a bit this last week or so, maybe because Scott Westerfeld's Goliath is that long, or that much to be savored). Because of that, it turned out to be an all-comics-all-the-time double-barreled order, but I did manage to sneak in a few things primarily for myself, and these are they:

Possessions, Volume 3: The Better House Trap by Ray Fawkes. I read the first two in this series -- about a demon resident in a cute little girl, who is herself resident in the escape-proof "collection" of creepy supernatural entities owned by an eccentric old lady and curated/controlled by her preternaturally prepared butler Thorne -- as electronic editions, and reviewed them for the late Realms of Fantasy and then here. Those books are very funny -- Gurgazon, that demon, has wonderful dialogue -- and I hope to inflict them on my sons now that I finally have one in print form.

The Mighty Skullboy Army, Volume 2 by Jacob Chabot is an unexpected sequel to the original 2007 book (which I reviewed then, and noted that it seemed to be mostly strips from 2002-3) about a kid with a skull for a head who is also head of an evil corporation. This is also a funny series suitable for my kids, and they'll probably get it eventually as well.

And last was the new B.P.R.D. collection, with the unwieldy title Hell on Earth Volume 2: Gods and Monsters. It's written, as usual by B.P.R.D. creator Mike Mignola with John Arcudi, and has art by Guy Davis for one of the included stories, and Tyler Crook for the other. And, presumably, the monsters are still threatening the earth, since that's the whole point of the series.